Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., told The Associated Press she was shocked to learn of the existence of other classified programs beyond the warrantless wiretapping.

Former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made a terse reference to other classified programs in an August 2007 letter to Congress. But Harman said that when she had asked Gonzales two years earlier if the government was conducting any other undisclosed intelligence activities, he denied it.

“He looked me in the eye and said ‘no,’” she said Friday.

As ThinkProgress previously reported, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey’s testimony before Congress implied that “other programs exist for domestic spying” outside of the NSA program. Gonzales even stated in 2007 that “other intelligence activities” existed. The new report found Gonzales’ statements to be “incomplete and confusing” and “inaccurate,” though not intentionally misleading.

Attorney General John Ashcroft had originally given authorization for the program based on a “misimpression” of what activities the NSA was actually conducting. The lack of full disclosure led to the showdown in Ashcroft’s hospital room in 2004, which almost caused a mass resignation at DoJ.

According to the report, top Cheney aide David Addington could personally decide who in the administration was “read into” the classified program. The inspectors general interviewed more than 200 people inside and outside the government. But because the inspectors general “lacked the authority to compel testimony,” five former Bush administration officials — Ashcroft, John Yoo, George Tenet, Andrew Card, and Addington — refused to be questioned.

Most of the intelligence leads generated under what was known as the “President’s Surveillance Program,” which began shortly after 9/11, did not have any connection to terrorism, the report said. Moreover, the information produced was of “limited” value to intelligence officials.

White the IGs’ report does not yield any details about the secret programs, Radar reported in 2008 that a program called “Main Core” was engaged in massive data collection of Americans:

According to a senior government official… ”There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” … One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

Glenn Greenwald notes that there likely “will be no consequences” for any of this “rampant and blantant” lawlessness because the Obama administration “opposes all Congressional investigations into Bush-era crimes and, worse, is engaged in extraordinary efforts to block courts from adjudicating the legality of Bush’s surveillance activities by claiming that even long-obsolete and clearly criminal programs are ’state secrets.’”

He said he and other analysts were trained to use a secret database, code-named Pinwale, in 2005 that archived foreign and domestic e-mail messages. He said Pinwale allowed N.S.A. analysts to read large volumes of e-mail messages to and from Americans as long as they fell within certain limits — no more than 30 percent of any database search, he recalled being told — and Americans were not explicitly singled out in the searches.

The former analyst added that his instructors had warned against committing any abuses, telling his class that another analyst had been investigated because he had improperly accessed the personal e-mail of former President Bill Clinton.

While the documents reveal 79 such cases on or after Sept. 12, 2001, they do not specify how many of the applications were made during Christie’s tenure. Christie served as U.S. attorney from Jan. 17, 2002 through November 2008. ACLU staff attorney Catherine Crump noted:

Tracking the location of people’s cell phones reveals intimate details of their daily routines and is highly invasive of their privacy. The government is violating the Constitution when it fails to get a search warrant before tracking people this way.

The new revelations about the cell phone tracking program under Christie is yet another example of the warrantless spying programs authorized under the Bush administration. Previous programs approved without a court order or warrant have included the secret program to monitor radiation levels at over 100 Muslim sites and the NSA spying program on the phone and e-mail communications of thousands of people inside the U.S. These programs run contrary to the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids “unreasonable searches” and sets out specific requirements for warrants, including “probable cause.”

During his tenure as U.S. attorney, Christie also awarded his former boss, John Ashcroft, a $28-52 million dollar no-bid contract to “monitor a large corporation willing to settle criminal charges out of court.” Former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach blasted the decision, saying that awarding a no-bid contract “suggests other political things, and that seems to me to be as wrong as it can be.” Christie also doled out “a multi-million-dollar, no bid contract to an ex-federal prosecutor who declined to criminally prosecute Christie’s brother on stock fraud charges two years earlier.”

Christie’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, declined to comment on the cell phone spying program “due to pending litigation.”

HARMAN: I’m just very disappointed that my country — I’m an American citizen just like you are — could have permitted what I think is a gross abuse of power in recent years. I’m one member of Congress who may be caught up in it, but I have a bully pulpit and I can fight back. I’m thinking about others who have no bully pulpit and may not be aware, as I was not, that right now somewhere, someone’s listening in on their conversations, and they’re innocent Americans.

Watch it:

Harman’s anger seems a bit disingenuous, considering that she was one of the earliest supporters of Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program. When the practice was revealed by the New York Times in 2005, she defended it as “essential,” though admitted she was “concerned” about its scope:

“I have been briefed since 2003 on a highly classified NSA foreign collection program that targeted Al Qaeda. I believe the program is essential to U.S. national security and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities,” Harman said. “Like many Americans, I am deeply concerned by reports that this program in fact goes far beyond the measures to target Al Qaeda about which I was briefed.”

In fact, in 2004 she “urged that The [New York] Times not publish the article” revealing Bush’s program.

Indeed, she issued a press release in 2007 specifically highlighting that the updated FISA bill she approved of would fully allow warrantless wiretapping:

This bill does a good job — a far better job than the bill reported last month by the Senate Intelligence Committee. … This legislation arms our intelligence professionals with the ability to listen to foreign targets — without a warrant — to uncover plots that threaten US national security. The bill also protects the Constitutional rights of Americans by requiring the FISA court, an Article III Court, to approve procedures to ensure that Americans are not targeted for warrantless surveillance.

To her credit, Harman warned against “a slippery legal slope to potential unprecedented abuse of innocent Americans’ privacy” and stated her opposition to granting telecommunications companies retroactive immunity. Perhaps her outrage at being a target of wiretapping herself will force her to realize that the program she deemed “essential” invaded the privacy of untold millions of Americans.

I am outraged to learn from reports leaked to the media over the last several days that the FBI or NSA secretly wiretapped my conversations in 2005 or 2006 while I was Ranking Member on the House Intelligence Committee.

This abuse of power is outrageous and I call on your Department to release all transcripts and other investigative material involving me in an unredacted form. It is my intention to make this material available to the public. [...]

[I]t is entirely appropriate to converse with advocacy organizations and constituent groups, and I am concerned about a chilling effect on other elected officials who may find themselves in my situation.

“Let me be absolutely clear,” Harman wrote. “I never contacted the Department of Justice, the White House or anyone else to seek favorable treatment regarding the national security cases on which I was briefed, or any other cases.”

And in one previously undisclosed episode, the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant, an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The agency believed that the congressman, whose identity could not be determined, was in contact — as part of a Congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 — with an extremist who had possible terrorist ties and was already under surveillance, the official said. The agency then sought to eavesdrop on the congressman’s conversations, the official said.

The official said the plan was ultimately blocked because of concerns from some intelligence officials about using the N.S.A., without court oversight, to spy on a member of Congress.

Congressional officials said they have “begun inquiries” into the matter.

Disclosure of the information sought by the customers, “which concerns how the United States seeks to detect and prevent terrorist attacks, would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security,” Justice Department lawyers said in papers filed Friday in San Francisco.

Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a lawyer for the customers, said Monday the filing was disappointing in light of the Obama presidential campaign’s “unceasing criticism of Bush-era secrecy and promise for more transparency.”

Glenn Greenwald argues, “In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad ‘state secrets’ privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and — even if what they’re doing is blatantly illegal and they know it’s illegal — you are barred from suing them unless they ‘willfully disclose’ to the public what they have learned.”

Since that time, the Bush Justice Department had been trying to identify Risen’s sources for his book on the nation’s spy agencies, called State of War. In April, the New York Times reported that former government officials had been called before a grand jury and confronted with phone records documenting their calls with Risen. Neither Risen nor the New York Times had received a subpoena for those records.

Risen told Olbermann that in light of Tice’s revelations, he believes he may have been a target of the NSA’s journalist-spying program:

OLBERMANN: Do you believe you have been a target of this NSA wiretap program?

RISEN: What I know for a fact is that the Bush administration got my phone records. Whether that was obtained by the FBI or the NSA, my lawyers and I have been trying to investigate that. We’re not sure. But we know for a fact that they showed my phone records to other people in the federal grand jury. And we have asked the court to investigate that.

Risen added that he believes the purpose of the NSA’s efforts was to “have a chilling effect on potential whistle blowers in the government, to make them realize that there is a big brother out there that will get them if they step out of line.” Watch it:

Transcript:

OLBERMANN: The NSA had access to all Americans’ communications, may still have, with certain groups monitored, quote, 24/7, 365 days a year, happening all the time, according to our previous guest, Russell Tice, and also credit card records. One of many targeted groups were journalists.

So, in our number two story, do any of these journalist targets know they were targets? Let’s turn to New York Times investigative reporter James Risen. He and a colleague at the time won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for their disclosure of the Bush administration program of warrant less wiretapping. A federal grand jury has been trying to get him to divulge confidential sources for State of War, the book he wrote on the CIA.

Thanks for your time, sir.

JAMES RISEN, AUTHOR, STATE OF WAR : Thanks for having me.

OLBERMANN: Do you believe you have been a target of this NSA wiretap program?

RISEN: What I know for a fact is that the Bush administration got my phone records. Whether that was obtained by the FBI or the NSA, my lawyers and I have been trying to investigate that. We’re not sure. But we know for a fact that they showed my phone records to other people in the federal grand jury. And we have asked the court to investigate that.

OLBERMANN: So your overall reaction to what Mr. Tice said tonight, what he said yesterday about the targeting of all journalists would be what?

RISEN: It’s — I don’t know. I can’t confirm what he said. But it’s really worth pursuing, and it’s worth investigating.

Here’s what I do know, is that the NSA has far greater capability than has ever been made public. All you have to do is look back at what we reported on about the eavesdropping program, and to remember that the famous hospital scene, where this was this big Constitutional crisis between Bush and the Justice Department lawyers, who were battling him over whether the program was legal. What they eventually disclosed was that they were arguing over a part of the program that nobody even today knows the specifics of.

So there is a large amount of operations and capabilities that the NSA has that most people don’t know of its existence, including me. So that’s, you know, one of the things I think is interesting about what he said.

OLBERMANN: Yes. I know exactly what you mean by that. Obviously, we have to — since we have such limited information, there’s a lot of theory going into this. What do you make of this one? The government, if Mr. Tice is correct, wiretaps or wiretapped journalists 24/7, then focuses in on any investigative reporter who is divulging or getting near information it considers too valuable or too much in some way?

RISEN: Yes. That’s clearly the great fear and the threat that — of the kind of capability that he is talking about. Is it possible that all they have to do is turn a few switches and knobs and suddenly narrow the field of what they’re looking at. He made the point, and I thought it was interesting — and I don’t know if it is true or not — that his job was to minimize the collection on journalist, but he said that it is quite possible that they could be reverse engineering that to actually gain that, collect that information.

That’s the great threat and the fear that I thought was interesting and something really worth pursuing.

OLBERMANN: It almost suggests a kind of NSA equivalent of Google for anyone of us out here, you, me or the viewer.

RISEN: Right.

OLBERMANN: Not to miss the obvious. Is the desired ultimate result, having been on both the investigative end of this and the recipient end of this, do you think that the ultimate result is suppression of reporting, either through direct coercion, or a chilling effect, that this could have every time somebody could contemplates pursuing, publishing, broadcasting a risky story?

RISEN: Yes. That is certainly part of it. I think the more direct part is to frighten people in the government from talking. It is to have a chilling effect on potential whistle blowers in the government, to make them realize that there is a big brother out there that will get them if they step out of line. I think that’s the more direct chilling effect on the source, rather than on the reporter so much.

We have a large organization that will support us. In my case, in my leak investigation, Simon and Schuster has been supporting me for my book. But, you know, the whistle blowers don’t have that.

OLBERMANN: As Mr. Tice well knows right now. James Risen, of the New York Times and author of State of War, with a unique perspective on this. And we thank you for sharing it.

RISEN: Thank you.

TICE: The National Security Agency had access to all Americans’ communications — faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications. And it didn’t matter whether you were in Kansas, in the middle of the country, and you never made any foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications. [...] But an organization that was collected on were U.S. news organizations and reporters and journalists.

OLBERMANN: To what purpose? I mean, is there a file somewhere full of every e-mail sent by all the reporters at the “New York Times?” Is there a recording somewhere of every conversation I had with my little nephew in upstate New York? Is it like that?

TICE: If it was involved in this specific avenue of collection, it would be everything. Yes. It would be everything.

Tice, a major whistleblower who helped reveal President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program to the New York Times in 2005, also told Olbermann that the agency sought specifically “to be deceptive” to prevent congressional committees from learning more about the program, calling it “a shell game”:

TICE: The agency would tailor some of their briefings to try to be deceptive for — whether it be, you know, a congressional committee or someone they really didn’t want to know exactly what was going on. So there would be a lot of bells and whistles in a briefing, and quite often, you know, the meat of the briefing was deceptive.

Watch portions of the interview (full interview here):

In October, two other whistleblowers told ABC News that the NSA “routinely” listened in on Americans’ phone calls and agents would often share “salacious or tantalizing” intercepted calls with each other. All this despite Bush’s frequent protestations that his illegal wiretaping program was “limited,” that it targeted only “a phone call of an al Qaeda, known al Qaeda suspect,” and that he ensured “that our civil liberties of our citizens are treated with respect.”

To the end, Bush and Cheney defended the program. In his final days in office, Cheney declared that “it always aggravated” him that the Times won a Pulitzer for exposing his administration’s illegal spying program.

In validating the government’s wide authority to collect foreign intelligence, it may offer legal credence to the Bush administration’s repeated assertions that the president has constitutional authority to act without specific court approval in ordering national security eavesdropping.

Separately, in his confirmation hearing today, Attorney General nominee Eric Holder said the President cannot violate FISA:

FEINGOLD: Is there anything in the FISA statute that makes you believe that the president has the ability under some other inherent power to disregard the FISA statute?

HOLDER: No, I do not see that in the FISA statute.

Watch it:

“I think that’s a very important break in favor of the rule of law that we’ve been waiting for in this country for many years,” remarked Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI).

“I think that there’s a lot that remains to look at, and I appreciate that President Obama doesn’t want to make it his purpose as a new president, with America in real distress in many directions, to go back and look at all this, but I think we in Congress have an independent responsibility, and I fully intend to discharge that responsibility,” Whitehouse said.

In a 487-page report out today recapping Bush’s “imperial presidency,” House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) recommends that “the incoming Administration finally begin an independent criminal review of activities of the outgoing Administration.”

Discussing the wiretapping program on Bill Bennett’s radio show today, Vice President Cheney called the program “important,” adding that it “always aggravated” him that the Times was rewarded for its reporting:

CHENEY: What happened then was they had the information we had, they knew how we were doing it, they knew what we were producing through that process. But then when — Nancy Pelosi, for example, was part of that group. But then it became public. The New York Times broke the story I think in December of ‘05, won the Pulitzer for it, which always aggravated me.

Listen here:

With his gripes over the New York Times’ Pulitzer, Cheney joins the list of conservatives, including Bennett, who have attacked the decision to reward those who revealed the secret program:

- “They win Pulitzer Prizes – I don’t think what they did was worthy of an award – I think what they did was worthy of jail,” — radio host Bill Bennett

“The Pulitzer Prize for treason,” — Powerline’s Scott Johnson

“After the quasi-collaborationist AP photo awards and the national security-damaging NYT awards, that’s just as well because I wouldn’t want the thing in the house,” — columnist Mark Steyn

“I don’t understand why you should pat yourself on the back for breaking the law and possibly, potentially, putting Americans at risk,” Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid

In December, former Justice Department official Thomas Tamm explained to Newsweek why he blew the whistle on the program, saying that it “was something the other branches of the government—and the public—ought to know about.” Tamm says that when a Justice superior said the program might be “illegal,” he thought, “I’m a law-enforcement officer and I’m participating in something that is illegal?”

Transcript:

Q: Let me ask you to step back. When you have arguments and disagreements — and I don’t want to get into the sensationalistic part of it, but the serious part of it — what is it that, whether we’re talking about senators or congressmen who criticized you, fundamentally disagreed with you, what is the disagreement about? Do you say, if you knew what I knew, you would hold my view? Do they look at the same facts as you, and just come out differently? Do they not — I’m going to throw out several options — do they not understand the nature of evil or the nature of the threat? Is it Pollyanna attitude? What is the difference? Is the difference in philosophy, a difference in a sense of reality? Or do you have a kind of privileged perspective because of what you have access to that other people don’t have? Do you see what I’m getting at?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes. I think it’s a combination of those things, Bill. We get into the whole area, for example, the Terrorist Surveillance Program –

Q Right, the perfect example.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Great example; important program, allows us to intercept communications from terrorists coming in to the United States, and a program we put in place using presidential authority. And it’s worked. It’s really given us some very, very good intelligence. Well, certain key members of Congress were briefed on that program from the very beginning. I used to preside over those briefings in my office with the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate on the intelligence committees, for example, or on one occasion the entire congressional leadership down in the Situation Room in the West Wing.

What happened then was they had the information we had, they knew how we were doing it, they knew what we were producing through that process. But then when — Nancy Pelosi, for example, was part of that group. But then it became public. The New York Times broke the story I think in December of ‘05, won the Pulitzer for it, which always aggravated me.

Q Absolutely, the worst –

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Not with all members. I don’t want to cast a wide net here, but you’ll end up with some specific members who knew about the program, had been briefed in the program because of their responsibilities, and who had said to proceed with the program, then suddenly are critical of it publicly because it’s controversial. They don’t want to stand up and say, well, I was briefed on that program, and it’s a good program. So it’s that kind of thing that is most frustrating of all.

Q I guess it’s not a failure of judgment or intelligence, but there’s a kind of — I won’t put words in your mouth, these are my words — but a kind of political cowardice, their failure to –

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Exactly.

I want to second Dahlia’s frustration with those who don’t see the newly released Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) torture memo as a big deal. Where is the outrage, the public outcry?! The shockingly flawed content of this memo, the deficient processes that led to its issuance, the horrific acts it encouraged, the fact that it was kept secret for years and that the Bush administration continues to withhold other memos like it — all demand our outrage.

Yes, we’ve seen much of it before. And yes, we are counting down the remaining months. But we must regain our ability to feel outrage whenever our government acts lawlessly and devises bogus constitutional arguments for outlandishly expansive presidential power. Otherwise, our own deep cynicism, about the possibility for a President and presidential lawyers to respect legal constraints, itself will threaten the rule of law — and not just for the remaining nine months of this administration, but for years and administrations to come.

Johnsen also criticized the Democratic Congress for legalizing Bush’s surveillance program. She also wrote passionately about restoring our “nation’s honor” by condemning “our nation’s past transgressions” and rejecting “Bush’s corruption of our American ideals.”

Yet, Gonzales is puzzled to this day why the public frowns upon his tenure in government. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Gonzales asks, “What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?” He added, “For some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.”

Fortunately, we can offer Gonzales some help in figuring out what he did that was so “fundamentally wrong.” Some lowlights:

Politicized the DOJ: – Gonzales approved the firing and hiring of federal prosecutors for political reasons and lied to Congress about the scandal.

Approved torture: In 2002, Gonzales “raised no objections and, without consulting military and State Department experts in the laws of torture and war,” approved an infamous August 2002 memo giving CIA interrogators “legal blessings.” Gonzales witnessed an interrogation at Gitmo in 2002 and approved of “whatever needs to be done” to detainees.

Lied about warrantless wiretapping: Gonzaled lied to Congress multiple times about the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping program, saying there wasn’t “any serious disagreement” about the program (there was).

Distorted pre-war intelligence: Last month, the House Oversight Committee revealed evidence showing that Gonzales lied to Congress in 2004 by claiming that the CIA “orally” approved Bush’s claim that Iraq sought uranium from Africa.

Furthermore, it appears Gonzales’s lying streak isn’t over. Gonzales told the WSJ that he didn’t play a central role in drafting the opinions allowing the CIA to use harsh interrogations. “John Yoo had strong views. No one could make him do anything he didn’t want to do,” he said. Gonzales also said he did not lie to Congress about the illegal surveillance program.

Gonzales also bizarrely claimed that he “found [John] Ashcroft as lucid as I’ve seen him at meetings in the White House,” referring to the infamous strong-arming of Ashcroft at his sickbed in 2002 in order to get approval of the illegal wiretapping program. In reality, Ashcroft had a severe case of gallstone pancreatitis and was a “very sick man,” according to then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey.

Since his resignation, Gonzales has still been unable to find work. “Any law firm that does due diligence on me sees all the investigations and the possibility that I might be indicted and they say, ‘Not right now,’” he said.

Gonzales’s bewilderment is similar to that of Vice President Cheney, who recently said he doesn’t have “any idea” why he has such low approval ratings.

It’s actually I think more radical than what Nixon said, because Nixon never enunciated that as policy during his administration and neither did his Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department. And this administration, they did. Cheney was asked, doesn’t Congress have any say here? He said, Congress can pass statutes, but he said, we don’t have to obey them — we don’t need no stinkin’ statutes.

Watch it:

Gellman also disputed Cheney’s claim that members of Congress who were briefed on Bush’s illegal surveillance program wholeheartedly endorsed it. “Now, I talked to four people who were in that meeting…and all of them dispute that that’s the way it happened,” he said.

I know a lot of good people who have made significant mistakes. I think Mr. Holder’s may actually make him a better steward of the Department of Justice because he has learned a hard lesson about protecting the integrity of that great institution from political fixers. I’m not suggesting errors of judgment are qualification for high office, but in this case, where the nominee is a smart, decent, humble man, who knows and loves the Department and has demonstrated his commitment to the rule of law across an entire career, the error should not disqualify him. Eric Holder should be confirmed as Attorney General.

CHENEY: We briefed them on the program and what we’d achieved and how it worked and asked them should we continue the program. They were unanimous, Republican and Democrat alike. All agreed: Absolutely essential to continue the program. I then said, Do we need to come to the Congress and get additional legislating authorization to continue what we’re doing? They said absolutely not. Don’t do it.

Watch it:

Cheney’s startling claims run directly counter to accounts by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). Rather than asking for congressional input, Pelosi and Rockefeller said in 2005 that Cheney simply informed them of what was going on — and ignored their objections:

PELOSI: The Bush Administration considered these briefings to be notification, not a request for approval. As is my practice whenever I am notified about such intelligence activities, I expressed my strong concerns during these briefings.

ROCKEFELLER: The record needs to be set clear that the Administration never afforded members briefed on the program an opportunity to either approve or disapprove the NSA program.

Other congressional members who attended those briefings have said that they were told only the barest outlines of the program. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Jane Harman (D-CA) said that the White House never disclosed that it was skirting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants. Former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) said the same thing:

The assumption was that if we did that, we would do it pursuant to the law, the law that regulates the surveillance of national security issues. And there was no suggestion that we were going to begin eavesdropping on United States citizens without following the full law. … There was no reference made to the fact that we were going to use that as the subterfuge to begin unwarranted, illegal — and I think unconstitutional — eavesdropping on American citizens.

What’s more, Rockefeller, then vice-chairman of the Intelligence Committee, wrote a hand-written letter to Cheney in 2003 to “reiterate [his] concerns” about the wiretapping program. “I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse these activities,” he wrote.

Cheney claims to have suggested seeking congressional approval right away. However, the White House put up a stiff fight just a few years later, when Congress finally sought to impose oversight of the wiretapping program. The Vice President has already presented misleading information about the dates and frequency of these supposed briefings; now he appears to be offering misleading descriptions of them.

These sources…describe a system in which the National Security Agency, with cooperation from some of the country’s largest telecommunications companies, was able to vacuum up the records of calls and e-mails of tens of millions of average Americans between September 2001 and March 2004. [...]

The NSA’s powerful computers became vast storehouses of “metadata.” They collected the telephone numbers of callers and recipients in the United States, and the time and duration of the calls. They also collected and stored the subject lines of e-mails, the times they were sent, and the addresses of both senders and recipients. … All this metadata was then sifted by the NSA, using complex algorithms to detect patterns and links that might indicate terrorist activity.

The Justice Department concluded, over White House objections, that the data mining operation constituted “electronic surveillance” and as such was in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Ultimately, the disagreement led to the now infamous confrontation at Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospital bedside.